Survivor

'Any minute now,' Fertility says.

Bright orange flashes in the dark on the other side of the floor, breaking everything into strange shapes of orange against black. The dresses and pants between here and there are hanging black shapes of people with arms and legs that burst into flame.

The shapes of a thousand people burning and collapsing head toward us. The bells are ringing so loud you feel it, and only Fertility's cold hand is keeping me here.

'It's any second now,' she says.

The heat's close enough to feel. The smoke's thick enough to taste. Not twenty feet away, the scarecrow shapes of women made by clothes on hangers start smoldering and slump to the floor. Breathing gets hard, and my eyes won't stay open.

And the bells ring.

My clothes feel ironed hot and dry against me.

The fire is that close.

Fertility says, 'Isn't this great? Don't you just love it?'

I put my hand up and it makes a shadow of cool between my face and the rack of rayon burning next to us.

This is the way to tell about fabric content. Pull a few threads off a garment, and hold them over a flame. If they don't burn, it's wool. If they burn slowly, it's cotton. If they torch the way the slacks next to us are blazing, the fabric is synthetic. Polyester. Rayon. Nylon.

Fertility says, 'It's right now.'

Then it's cold before I can think why. It's wet. Water pours down. The orange light flickers, lower, lower, gone. The smokes washes out of the air.

One by one, spotlights blink on to show what's left in huge shadows of black and white. The ringing bells stop. The recorded Cha-Cha music comes back on.

'I saw this all happen in a dream,' Fertility says. 'We were never in any real danger.'

This is the same as her and Trevor on the ocean liner that only sank halfway.

'Next week,' Fertility says, 'there's a commercial bakery that's going to explode. You want to go watch? I see at least three or four people getting killed.'

My hair, her hair, my clothes, her clothes, there isn't a smudge or burn on us.

Daniel, Chapter Three, Verse Twenty-seven:' ... the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.'

Been there, I'm thinking. Done that.

'Hurry,' she says. 'Some firemen will be coming up here in a few minutes.' She takes my hands in hers and says, 'Let's not let this Cha-Cha go to waste.'

One, two, cha cha cha. We dance, three, four, cha cha cha.

The wreckage, the burned arms and legs of the clothes tangled on the floor around us, the ceiling hanging down, the water still falling, everything soaking wet, we dance one, two, cha cha cha.

And that's just how they find us.

There's a gas station going to explode next week. There's a pet store where all the canaries, their whole inventory of hundreds of canaries, will escape. Fertility has previewed all this in dream after dream. There's a hotel where a water pipe is leaking right this moment. For weeks, the water has been dripping inside the walls, dissolving plaster, rotting wood, rusting metal, and at 3:04 next Tuesday afternoon, the mammoth crystal chandelier in the middle of the lobby ceiling will drop.

In her dream, there's a rattle of lead crystal thingamabobs, then a spray of plaster dust. Some bracket will pop the head off a rusted bolt. In Fertility's dream, the bolt head lands, plop, on the carpet next to an old man with luggage. He picks it up and turns it over in his palm, looking at the rust and the shining steel inside the stress fracture.

A woman pulling her luggage on wheels stops next to the man and asks if he's waiting in line.

The old man says, 'No.'

The woman says, 'Thank you.'

A clerk at the desk hits a bell and says, 'Front please!'

A bellhop steps forward.

At that moment the chandelier falls.

That's how exact Fertility's dreams get, and in each dream she looks for another detail. The woman is wearing a red suit, jacket and skirt with a Christian Dior gold chain belt. The old man has blue eyes. His hand holding the bolt head has a gold wedding band. The bellhop has a pierced ear, but he's got the earring out.

Behind the desk clerk, Fertility says, there's a complicated French Baroque clock inside a frou-frou case of gilded lead with seashells and dolphins supporting the clock dial. The time is 3:04 p.m.

Fertility told me all this with her eyes closed. Remembering it or making it up, I couldn't tell.

I Thessalonians, Chapter Five, Verse Twenty:'Despise not prophesyings.'

The chandelier will blink out at the second it falls so everybody underneath will look up. What happens after that, she can't say. She always wakes up. The dreams always end there, at the moment the chandelier falls or the plane crashes. Or the train derails. The lightning strikes. The earth quakes.

She's started keeping a calendar of upcoming disasters. She shows it to me. I show her the daily planner book the people I work for keep. On tap for next week, she has a bakery explosion, the loose canaries, the gas station fire, the hotel chandelier.

Fertility says to take my pick. We'll pack a lunch and make a real day out of it.

For next week, I have mowing the lawn, twice. Polishing the brass fireplace tool set. Checking the dates on everything in the freezer. Rotating the canned goods in the pantry. Buying the people I work for wedding anniversary gifts to give each other.

I say, Sure. Whatever she wants.

This was right after the firemen discovered us doing the Cha-Cha inside the burned-out fifth-floor women's department without a mark on us. After they took our statements and made us sign insurance forms letting them off the hook, they escorted us down to the street. We're back outside when I ask Fertility, Why?

Why doesn't she call anybody and warn them before a disaster?

'Because nobody wants bad news,' she says and shrugs. 'Trevor told people every time he had a dream, and it just got him in trouble.'

Nobody wanted to believe in a talent this incredible, she said. They'd accuse Trevor of being a terrorist or an arsonist.

A pyromaniac, according to the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

In another century, they'd have accused him of being a warlock.

So Trevor killed himself.

With a little help from yours truly.

'So that's why I don't tell people anymore,' Fertility says. 'Maybe if it was an orphanage that was going to burn down, maybe I'd tell, but these people killed my brother, so why should I do them any favors?'

The way I can save human lives here is to tell Fertility the truth, I killed her brother, but I don't. We sit at the bus stop not talking until her bus is within sight. She writes me her phone number on a sales receipt she picks up off the ground. This is good for three-hundred-plus dollars if I take it back to the store and work my scam. Fertility says to pick a disaster and give her a call. The bus takes her away to wherever, to work, to dinner, to dream.

According to my daily planner, I'm dusting baseboards. I'm clipping hedges right now. I'm mowing the lawn. I'm detailing the cars. I should be ironing, but I know the caseworker is getting my work done.

According to the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I should go into a store and shoplift. I should go work off some pent-up sexual energy.

According to Fertility, I should pack a lunch to eat while we watch strangers get killed. I can picture us on a velvet love seat in the hotel lobby, sipping tea Tuesday afternoon in our front-row seat.

According to the Bible, I should be, I don't know what.

According to Creedish church doctrine, I should be dead.

None of the above really catches my fancy so I just walk around downtown. Outside the commercial bakery